Change Of Heart

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Distracted, I walked to the front of my cell, to see who he was having a conversation with at this hour of night. But the pod was silent, empty. Maybe he was having a nightmare. “Bourne?” I whispered. “Are you okay?” Most people wince. Even the polite ones like the eighty year old missionary who comes to bring us pamphlets once a month always does a double-take, as if I look even worse than he remembers. But Shay Bourne just met my gaze and nodded at me, as if I were no different than anyone else.

In the past month, Claire’s arrhythmias had worsened. Her AICD was going off six times a day. I’d been told that when it fired, it felt like an electric current running through the body. It restarted your heart, but it hurt like hell. Once a month would be devastating; once a day would be debilitating. And then there was Claire. I leaned forward for a better look. I opened up my mouth, tugged my lower lip, searching for the blisters and cankers that had kept me from eating. In a way, I was relieved to talk about TV instead of art history. Although I used to be a PBS snob, I now found myself watching the shows the rest of the philistines in here enjoyed. We were addicted to the Red Sox and the Patriots; we kept meticulous score of their league standings depending on the time of year, and we debated the fairness of umpire and ref calls as if they were law and we were Supreme Court judges. Sometimes, like us, our teams had their hopes dashed; other times we got to share their Super Bowl. But there hadn’t been any televised games today, and with the cable on the blitz, there’d barely been anything worth watching. I realized then that even though Shay was a prisoner, he had a certain power over Warden Coyne. He had a certain power over all of us. Shay Bourne had done what no brute force or power play or gang threat had been able to do all the years I’d been on I-tier: he’d brought us together.Picoult exudes a woman’s way of knowing, which may explain how her books manage to be disturbing and comforting in the same breath… Picoult has the answers, but true to life, they are not easily arrived at.” I wasn’t about to take that bait. “Nice to meet you,” I said. I never quite figured out the protocol for this part of the experience – you said hello and then disrobed immediately so that a total stranger could lay hands on you...and you paid for this privilege. Was it just me, or was there a great deal that spa treatments had in common with prostitution? As if I’d summoned her, Claire moved inside me then: a slow tumble of butterfly limbs, a memory of why I had to stay behind.

Enter Father Michael Wright, a young local priest. Called in as Shay’s spiritual advisor, he knows redemption has nothing to do with organ donation – and plans to convince Bourne. But then Bourne begins to perform miracles at the prison that are witnessed by officers, fellow inmates, and even Father Michael – and the media begins to call him a messiah. Could an unkempt, bipolar, convicted murderer be a savior? It seems highly unlikely, to the priest. Until he realizes that the things Shay says may not come from the Bible…but are, verbatim, from a gospel that the early Christian church rejected two thousand years ago…and that is still considered heresy. Keep out of this, homo.” Calloway thought for a moment. “The brownie. I want that brownie you’ve been hoarding.” That thing for the doctors,” Shay said, struggling to find the right words. “There was a little girl –“ to give or get smaller money in exchange for: [~ +object ( +for +object) ]Can you change this twenty for two fives and a ten?The police chief had arranged for a twenty-one gun salute, and as it finished, five fighter jets rose over the distant violet mountains. They sliced the sky in parallel lines, and then, just as they flew overhead, the plane on the far right broke off like a splinter, soaring east. Suddenly, I saw a fishing line whiz into the narrow space beneath my cell door. “Want some?” Shay asked. Petridis, Alexis; Hutchinson, Kate; Simpson, Dave; Aroesti, Rachel; Hann, Michael; Mumford, Gwilym (15 September 2016). "Bowie? Skepta? Radiohead? Our critics decide who should win the Mercury prize". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 January 2020 . Retrieved 28 March 2021.

As you can imagine Shay’s request attracts a lot of media attention – which the prison doesn’t want. They call in a priest to talk some sense into Shay about what redemption really is – and the priest arrives just as Shay begins performing miracles. The priest can remember one other guy who had a death sentence hanging over his head who was performing miracles…and things didn’t work out so well for Jesus in the end, either…and so instead of TALKING to Shay, the priest decides to just listen. But nothing Shay says comes from the Bible. Instead, it comes verbatim from a real, ancient gospel that was rejected as heresy by the Church, and excluded from the Bible. And the priest begins to think: People are always finding God in prison – but what if He was already there? And what if the things he said didn’t match what you’d been told your whole life…but instead, the things you’d been told were WRONG? Change of Heart (US 12-inch Single liner notes). Cyndi Lauper. Portrait Records. 1986. CYNDI T1. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link)

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The 101 Best Songs of 2016". Spin. 13 December 2016. Archived from the original on 24 March 2021 . Retrieved 28 March 2021.